Mildly concerning. For a small agency whose roster is mostly made up of 3rd and 4th liners, career back-ups and bottom pairing "D", MFive have garnered some massive overpayments for their clients in recent memory (Vinny, Letang, Clarkson, Bolland)

A tiny agency like theirs has a lot riding on Mason's contract, hopefully Hexy handles that one and brings in his Ol' White "Vic" as the mediator.

Holmgren can be pretty hit or miss with signings. I will admit that he tends to mess up the lesser signings or depth players a lot (free agency signings included) and do better with the big name players.

You're going to call the Giroux contract a bad one after 30 games? Come on. You want to keep your best player, you have to give him big bucks. What are you going to do, let him walk? Give me a break.

And the Hartnell contract, as many have pointed out, was not a bad move at the time. That was a lower deal than he would have gotten on the open market. In hindsight, he hasn't lived up to it, but if you don't want to lose your highest scoring player from the previous season for nothing, you have to pay him. It's easy to look at him now and say he would not have been missed, but coming off a career high in goals, and having been pretty much a lock for 20-30 for the past decade, you are going to tell me signing Hartnell was not the right move? Who replaces him? How much should he have gotten?

If he keeps playing like he has until now you are looking closer at $6m than at $4m per.
The cap rising won't be lost on his agent.

But the fact that no other team really needs a starter next year except Edmonton won't be lost on Mason, or Homer. He doesn't have any place else to go, why mess up a good thing to be a little more of a millionaire?

You're going to call the Giroux contract a bad one after 30 games? Come on. You want to keep your best player, you have to give him big bucks. What are you going to do, let him walk? Give me a break.

He was an RFA. He had no chance to walk.
He was also greatly overperforming and therefore signed to early.
There was literally no pressure at all to get this done from the organizations point of view. Same thing that happened with Kimo's extension, except the overperforming part. He already started to suck back then.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrinkFightFlyers

And the Hartnell contract, as many have pointed out, was not a bad move at the time. That was a lower deal than he would have gotten on the open market. In hindsight, he hasn't lived up to it, but if you don't want to lose your highest scoring player from the previous season for nothing, you have to pay him. It's easy to look at him now and say he would not have been missed, but coming off a career high in goals, and having been pretty much a lock for 20-30 for the past decade, you are going to tell me signing Hartnell was not the right move? Who replaces him? How much should he have gotten?

It's too long. It was too long back then.
This organization (I'm not singling out Homer here) hasn't understood that under the new CBA you can't circumvent the cap. You have to pay up for your NHL talent and work in cheap young players on ELC's. There is no other way of building a good team, other than getting lucky with UFA signings that somehow overperform.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry44

But the fact that no other team really needs a starter next year except Edmonton won't be lost on Mason, or Homer. He doesn't have any place else to go, why mess up a good thing to be a little more of a millionaire?

This hasn't stopped the Rangers to give Lundqvist $8.5m per year until he's a senior citizen. Less recently neither the Canadiens, the Bruins nor the Coyotes were able to turn that argument into a cap benefit.
Oh btw, not only the Oilers but also the Panthers, Islanders, Capitals, Wild, Jets and Flames would probably like to get their hands on Mason.